


familiar kindnesses

by aceds



Category: Kagerou Project, Mekakucity Actors
Genre: Character Study, Coming of Age, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Sleepovers, Yuukei Quartet-centric, but if you want to believe they're in mutual pining you can do that, kidomomo is implied too but not the main focus, the end goal was for me to go proudly "look at them! they're best friends!", the main pairings are all implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceds/pseuds/aceds
Summary: “What are you planning to do?” The finished question isAre you going back to school? Will you sell this house? What are both of us going to do, now that we’re back? With our circumstances, what will the world do to us? It’s never been kind. It might as well spit us out into the wild.It sounds wrong in his mouth, in his voice.(The quartet has a sleepover. It involves a lot of thinking, and being sad.)
Relationships: Enomoto Takane | Ene/Kokonose Haruka | Konoha, Kisaragi Shintaro/Tateyama Ayano
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	familiar kindnesses

**Author's Note:**

> happy august fifteen! i love the yuukei quartet more than anything and i also like the idea of post str quartet just trying to get better together... i have many brainworms about the four of them. i wrote this a month before the actual day and since then i've had an epiphany that this should have been polyquartet, i apologize that it wasn't. i'll make it up to you. 
> 
> ft. an abundance of italics, self-indulgence, and people crying on shoulders, as usual when it comes to me.

None of them have ever been planners, so Shintaro shouldn’t be so surprised when he’s dragged out of his own home without warning. Takane and Haruka had been waiting outside when he opened the door, cheerful smile, impatient hum, and all.

“We’re meeting Ayano on the way,” Takane explains, and they _still_ haven’t explained what’s going on. Shintaro tossed Haruka coke from his fridge before they went out, and he cracks it open as Shintaro and Takane argue. Summer is already starting to take its toll on Shintaro, who pulls at his shirt loosely. It wasn’t this bad yesterday, and he knows his friends feel the same; Takane’s been making uncomfortable sounds for the past five minutes, and Haruka is _living_ off of his soda. The rest of his friends have been going through it _stunningly_ , except Momo, who’s coping by staying locked up in her room and talking to their leader. (Thinking about it, every time Kido goes to talk to Shintaro, she pointedly avoids his eyes and turns red in the face. For the past few months, Momo’s been the one to initiate conversation between the three of them because Kido looks like she’s about to evolve into a tomato. Kido always seems calmed by his sister’s smile.) (If he pieces it together, he doesn’t like the answer, so he pretends like he doesn’t have a clue.) 

“It’s a sleepover,” explains Haruka, and Shintaro wants to explode. It feels a little childish and naïve, to hold a sleepover when they’re all finally beginning their twenties, but he can’t bring it in himself to argue. _Aren’t we a little too old for that?_ He wants to ask, but he can’t say it in the face of Haruka’s hopeful, genuine smile. Takane makes a little grumble. Shintaro can make out the word “Ayano” and guesses immediately what must have happened. He shoves his hands into his jersey, and focuses on this feeling. There is something comfortable and wholly familiar about this, the three of them walking in a steady silence. It’s not awkward; none of them have ever been talkers either, and there’s something different, kinder, about a relationship that doesn’t require you to open your mouth half the time. 

Haruka makes a humming sound as he finishes his soda, then looks at the two of them helplessly. Takane rolls her eyes and makes to continue forward, citing something about Ayano probably having a few more drinks, but Shintaro joins Haruka in the _please, could we stop and buy some?_ face and she looks at both of them, her voice heavy with exasperation. 

The summer heat is unbearable, but he finds himself glad for it as the three of them stand under the shade, opening cans of soda and relishing in the end of their youth. 

\--

Takane shoves a phone into Shintaro’s face that makes him fall backwards onto Haruka, who raises his sketchbook lightly and continues drawing. “ _Ring_ is a classic. If you had to pick a _real_ horror movie, you’d pick _Ring!_ ” Gritting his teeth, he shoves upwards on Haruka’s knees, which lets out an _oomf_ from the older boy. 

“It’s exactly because _Ring_ is a classic that we can’t watch it. Everyone here’s seen it!” he argues, scrambling around for his own phone. The four of them are laid out on blankets in Ayano’s bedroom that she placed on top of each other and tossed dozens of pillows on. She’s absent-mindedly scrolling through the selection on their TV now, tossing popcorn in her mouth in between short intervals. She stole the bowl of popcorn earlier and narrows her eyes when Shintaro tries to get one. _You always take two handfuls,_ she’d said in defense. She sacrifices her life hundreds, thousands of times to save them all, but she draws the line at fucking _popcorn._ It’s the strangest thing. Shintaro can’t think of anything more endearing. 

The door creaks behind the four of them and almost comically, they turn their heads to it one by one. Tsubomi pokes her head in, phone gripped in one hand and a strained smile on her face. “Could you guys tone it down in here?” She pointedly ignores how Haruka, Takane, and Shintaro are all tied limbs and ruined bedsheets on the left side of the blankets, waving the phone. Shintaro can see Momo on the other end, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her pajamas on. All four of them turn red at once. 

“Of- of course!” Takane’s voice is shrill at first, lowering to a steady tone. “We’re really sorry!” Kido just tilts her head curiously at them. It feels so strange to not see hair fall across her shoulders, the way it did when they were younger. The choice had been sudden and impulsive, Ayano had said to him. Two weeks ago, Ayano had come home and Kido’s hair had been cut, so that it just managed to touch her shoulders neatly. It was a great look for her. _I’d never seen her happier,_ Ayano had admitted. 

Kido shakes her head hurriedly. “It’s not a bother. No one in this house sleeps right. I just, uh…” 

“I can _hardly_ hear Tsubomi.” Momo speaks and they all wince at the crackle of the audio. “Just a little quieter!” Shintaro scratches the back of his head nervously. There was something to be said about that. The four of them were practically adults and they were being told off by their younger siblings. 

When they apologize again and say their goodnights, Kido pokes her head in and looks over them. “From personal experience, my sister hates horror,” she starts, and Ayano looks so scandalized at being exposed that Haruka stifles a laugh. “something exciting, maybe. _Now You See Me_?” she waves and leaves them be, to everyone’s silence. 

Takane is the first one to speak. “ _Again_ with that mentality of yours,” she complains, tossing a pillow at Ayano, who looks sheepish. “You should just tell us,” she says, her voice softer now. “None of us would be mad.” Ayano nods, looking down, and chooses to apologize by putting the bowl of popcorn between them all. Haruka and Shintaro jump for it at the same time and then pull back to let the other go first. Instead, Takane reaches from behind the two of them to get a handful. 

“ _Now You See Us_ it is, then!” Haruka reaches over and snatches the remote from Shintaro’s hand. Shintaro sputters and then stills, letting them do whatever they want. Takane seems to have the same epiphany, flopping down next to him. 

“Our friends are so _weird_ ,” she hisses, but there isn’t any malice behind it. There’s never been, he recalls gently. Shintaro nods numbly. “Shintaro? Shintaro?”

“You put your elbows on my ankles,” he groans out, trying to keep his eyes open. Takane looks like she’s about to pummel him into the pillows, but she flops onto the bed sheets and gives Ayano popcorn instead. Haruka gives Shintaro a grin when he looks at him. 

“Takane, can we play something tomorrow?” he asks her off-handedly as the movie starts playing. The lights sear into the back of his head and he hears, faintly, Haruka reaching forward to shut off the light. 

“I’ll kick your ass.”

“Yeah right,” 

It’s going to be a long night. 

\--

Around one in the morning, they’re in the middle of their second watch, some old magical girl anime that none of them will recall in the morning. Shintaro looks half asleep, laid out next to Ayano, who runs her hand through his hair absent-mindedly. There’s a low hum in her throat and she looks deeply engrossed in the show (Takane doesn’t even know who the main characters are). It’s so tender that Takane has to look away. 

“ _Haruka,”_ she means for it to come out as a light whisper but her voice and her body, that are supposed to be _twenty-one years old_ make it come out as a panicked squeak. Haruka lifts a half-closed eyelid in response, and he looksdelirious, a slow smile on his face, as always, and Takane doesn’t stop him when he reaches up and touches her hair. She started growing it out a few months ago, and she always forgets what a hassle it is to keep her hair in check. 

_If it’s uncomfortable for you, would you want to keep it?_ Haruka had said once, his voice as earnest as usual. _I want to…_ She remembers it clear as day; pausing, a hand on her lip. _It’s progress. I want to be able to grow from everything that happened. This is the way I’m showing it._ His smile had been like the sun. 

Haruka lets his hand fall back. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, eyes a little brighter. “Did you need something?” She motions to the pillow beside him and he tosses it towards her. She tucks up against it, laying a foot across Haruka’s lap delicately and then putting her head on Ayano’s shoulder. They’re all tangled up together even now, shaky limbs and disjointed memories. There’s a part of her that wishes they could’ve had this _before_ , before they were hands that freeze and shake when they remember something bad, before they had to stop and pause and take in that everyone was whole and real. A part of her wishes that they’d had a normal life, that they’d been able to graduate when they were supposed to, that none of them ever had to suffer just to make it here. 

It’s always been just barely implied, things like Takane touching her shoulder, or putting a hand across her throat. She’s _still_ not used to this body, to feeling the texture of her hands and her legs. She doesn’t mention it to anyone, she doesn’t talk about it, because how bad would it be if she confessed that she was in her twenties and still felt like she was a teenage girl? At least no one tries to force it out of her. She might be moving forward the slowest out of all of them, but she’s moving and that counts, no matter how hard she tries to tell herself it doesn’t sometimes. 

Takane stretches an arm to her right, colliding with Shintaro’s knee, and tries to fall asleep. 

\-- 

Ayano is trying to focus on the riveting storyline of the thirty-fourth episode when Shintaro makes a sound like “...no.” She lays Takane’s head down on a pillow softly, patting her head absently. 

“Shintaro?” she asks, lifting her hand. The boy is face-first on the pillow, and he adjusts his head so he can meet her eyes. _Ayano,_ he repeats, clearer this time. He looks like he was woken up by a bad dream, and his voice sounds raw and open. “What is it?” 

“Can I tell you something?” Sniffle. 

“Of course,” she replies, the hint of confusion in her voice.

“I see stuff,” he begins, and his words are so slurred that Ayano has to hold back a soft laugh. “from the other. Timelines.” The smile falls off her face as quick as lightning. 

“Every time I close my eyes. Flashes of memory. All of the… the hurt.” His eyes shut and open again. “Scissors. Scissors. Scissors. Meeting Hibiya in one world. Scissors. Konoha — Haruka _._ ” his voice cracks on that final note. Ayano feels the strings in her heart make a twang, her toes curl up. Both of them can interpret the unsaid. Shintaro thinks of their previous deaths, unwillingly, all the time. He sounds so helpless that it makes Ayano want to put two hands over her ears. 

“You. Going away. Again and again and – and _again."_ She wants to find a way to help him somehow, to ease how torturous it must be to remember when no one else does. She can’t. She can't, she can’t she can’t she can’t and it makes her chest tighten and freeze. She doesn’t know, she hasn’t been there, and she couldn’t possibly understand. But that’s not what Shintaro thinks — he’s trying his hardest to explain, to confess something to her that he never would have been able to if they were having this conversation in broad daylight. 

“ _Momo,”_ and the pain in his voice is so potent, his voice so choked up. “She – there was a roof. And she, she _fell,_ and I saw, I see it _everyday —_ ” She can’t sit by and let him just sit there. She pulls him up and lets him put his face in the brink between her neck and her shoulder. He keeps muttering, words Ayano can no longer make out. She can feel tears on her shoulder, hands clutching at the blankets. She raises her head to the ceiling, littered in glow-in-the-dark stars that she stuck on when she was a little girl, and blinks back tears. 

Sometimes it strikes her how far they still are from getting better. Sometimes it hits her like a slow wave of freezing water and she has to stop and take a breath. It’s _fine_. It’s fine. They’re moving. They’re still here. The problem with it is that every one of them keeps their horrors tucked tight against their chest and they don’t let it out until it’s too late, until it just _has_ to break out and it leaks out, in their eyes, their hands, their voice and their words. Those are the warning signs. _This_ is the culmination, Ayano trying valiantly to keep Shintaro calm as he cries up a storm. 

He keeps telling her, choked up words that don’t make sense, really, but it’s all he can do and she can’t blame him. His voice starts getting fainter and fainter, and he keeps repeating the exact same phrase that Ayano can’t make out. When he falls asleep and Ayano lays him down on a pillow again, he rolls over and grabs Ayano’s hand. 

Ayano realizes that the television never really stopped, that it’s still in the backdrop behind her, a picture-perfect world against the moment. “I’m sorry,” Shintaro repeats, and he clears his throat and tries again. Ayano feels her heart sink. “I’m sorry. For everything. When we were, when I was…” he trails off and in his own haze, begins to doze off. Ayano stares at him for five long seconds, leans forward, and puts her face in her hands. 

She wishes she could help. They always tell her that it’s fine, she’s done enough, but it’s _never_ been enough, she wants to _so badly_ , to be able to take up the pain inside all of their hearts and store it inside herself, so that everyone else can be overjoyed, can go to sleep each night without curling up on themselves. The first few weeks Ayano had come back from what they called the daze, Shuuya had put on a pretense of acting like they were just old friends meeting again. She knows her brother, she knows what it means when he puts his hands inside his pockets so nobody sees that they’re shaking. She has the image of it clear as day; Shuuya knocking on her bedroom door and then collapsing into her, crying and sobbing and telling her that he should’ve known better, that she must’ve suffered so much, that it hadn’t been worth it at all and why couldn’t she believe that? 

She hears about it too, how her death forced everyone around her to change. How Takane would look her up on browsers and look for her in secret, trying to find a way to save her friend. How Takane remembered Ayano’s request, how she, Ene, got Shintaro out of that self-imposed cage, moving forward. How Kousuke made himself grow up before any of them had been sixteen, how Tsubomi had changed herself and tried to embody the type of hero that she had always pushed for them to be. There is so much history that she missed, so much she’ll never learn and might never understand. There’s a divide between what they tell her happened and what really happened. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever have the courage to bridge the two together. 

Her particular secret, the one under the thousands of layers over her heart, is that she would always do it all over again. If it was for Shintaro, for Takane and Haruka, for her _siblings_ , most of all — all she’s _ever_ wanted to do was retain their smiles, to help provide them a brighter future. She could and would never confess it, but it’s the truth. 

Ayano doesn’t know when she does it, but she pulls herself up and off the sheets, reaching for a jacket that they put to the side. When she turns, she can see Takane squeezed into herself like a ball, and Shintaro with an arm over his eyes. She wonders what they had to go through, what they still have to go through. They had spent years together. They’ve been companions longer than a lot of them have been. There’s still residue from all of the time spent by each other’s side. They can argue all they want, but they’re extremely close friends. They’d always put each other first.

She notices something off, and then realizes, startled, that Haruka is nowhere to be found. She doesn’t know when he disappeared or if he noticed what happened, but she turns around and creaks the door open, shutting it as quietly as she can before she begins to look for him. It’s permanent. That instinct of hers. Others before me. Everyone before Ayano. It’s cost her before, and she’d regretted it until she’d been let out, but she still can’t find it in herself to put herself first, no matter what. Selfless to a fault. 

\--

There are gaps in his memory. Large, whole, ones that he lies awake at night trying to put together. He feels like he has a giant puzzle, but so many of the pieces are missing that he’s starting to crack under the pressure, because he has to keep pretending he never lost anything at all. Haruka leans back on the counter, focusing his energy into finding a carton of milk. 

The cold air hits his face. He woke up to the silence, Ayano’s eyes glued to the TV screen while the rest of them looked half asleep. Takane had grabbed his hand in the middle of the night, it seemed, and he felt the low rumble of his stomach telling him that he probably had to go get a midnight snack. With his tall stature, it had been hard to sneak downstairs as quietly as possible, and he probably should have asked Ayano to come with him, but she looked so in love with the show that he couldn’t bring himself to ask. 

He’s been to Ayano’s house before, when none of them had barely a silver of the future, what it would bring, what it would mean for them. Of course, that had been when the Tateyama parents were here. He sees their room at the end of the hall, and he can feel the passage of time, the history left untouched. Ayano had chosen to move back into this house, but she’d never had an eye for interior design. The home still felt like a haunted house, the rest of them roaming it like ghosts. In an effort to stay closer to her, Kido and Seto had moved back in, if only for a short while, they had said. The house seemed like a waystation, a refuge. It was the one thing that had remained unchanged, even if everything and everyone around it had. Sometimes, he expects to turn the corner and see Kousuke Seto standing below him. 

When he was given back his memory, (albeit at a slow pace), he had stopped to look at Seto, really take a look at him and take in the fact that the fearful boy Haruka had seen all those years ago had become strong-willed and a source of inspiration for a lot of them. He still hates being in crowds. Seto doesn’t notice, but he puts a hand on one ear by instinct, as if trying to block out voices that aren’t there anymore. 

“You’re Kokonose-san?!” Seto had reacted with so much surprise when he found out that everyone had laughed. All he remembers is being faintly confused. _Kokonose-san. Kokonose Haruka._ He’d roll the name around in his tongue, feeling out where he ended and where he began. He knew so little then. He had been Kokonose Haruka, and then he’d been Konoha, and then he’d had Kokonose Haruka shoved back into his head. Haruka reaches his hand inside the fridge. He can’t really see properly; he should have flicked the switch before he came inside, but now he thinks he can feel something touching his knuckles — _bananas?_

“Haruka!” He drags his hand back suddenly, blinking into the sudden light to meet Ayano’s eyes. She’s standing at the doorway and starts walking up to him, one hand on the wall. 

“Ayano,” his grin is lopsided. He wishes he could make himself sound less sleepy all the time. “why are there bananas in your fridge?” 

She looks like she’s about to reprimand him before her eyebrows furrow. (Haruka sees: red lining her eyes, hands tugging at her own shirt.) “...Huh?”

“Bananas in your fridge,” he sticks his hand back to pick up the whole bunch, bringing it out to place it onto the counter. 

“Are they not supposed to be there?” There’s genuine uncertainty in her tone. Her eyes flash down to her palms and then to Haruka again. “I thought…” 

“No. They’re still a little ripe, see? They might have…” he trails off because suddenly Ayano looks like she might start to cry. 

She pulls a hand up to rub at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t notice. Ah, uh, where would I put them?” Her voice is cracking. Haruka’s hand tightens on the top of the fridge.

Haruka stands up. If it’s Ayano, it doesn’t sound like she wants to scream or be hugged. When it’s Ayano, it’s patience, it’s telling her ways to be better. She doesn’t like being pitied, but she wants to know she’s made mistakes. Takane told him that. They were sitting in the middle of a field and she was talking about everything that he had missed. Takane. She’s a nice thought. But he can’t expect Ayano to always conform to everyone’s idea of her, that preconceived notion that Tateyama Ayano was greater-than-life, that she was perfect and pristine. 

“It’s okay, Ayano,” he hopes Ayano can hear the sincerity in his voice. Ayano places a hand on the counter as if trying to steady herself. The two of them look so small, standing there in the kitchen. “Do you have a basket? You can put fruits in there.” 

A few minutes later, they have Ayano’s fruits put into a basket. He lets out a little breath of relief. “I’m glad you got that fixed! You bought a lot of fruits, after all.”

“Yeah,” He can see the beginnings of a smile on her face already. It’s familiar, a comfort, but part of him doesn’t know why. Ayano was his friend when they were in school, too. She said to him once that he used to tutor her himself. _I’m not very smart, and you were the kindest person I knew. You still are._

Kano had said, _She got stuck in the daze, too. She wanted to save you and En– Takane._ If that was true, that meant Ayano had put herself into that hell just to save him and Takane. 

She cleared her throat, turning towards the fridge. “Were you looking for the milk?” She opens the fridge again, and Haruka spots the milk immediately, choking out a laugh at his expense. “I was really confused when you couldn’t find it.” 

Ayano pours her and Haruka glasses of milk and sets them down, pursing her lips and putting her hands together. She checks the wall clock above them, and Haruka does the same. _4:12_ AM. He yawns and sips at his milk, palm landing on the counter to steady himself involuntarily, by nature.

“Ayano?”

“Mm,”

“What are you planning to do?” The finished question is _Are you going back to school? Will you sell this house? What are both of us going to do, now that we’re back? With our circumstances, what will the world do to us? It’s never been kind. It might as well spit us out into the wild._ It sounds wrong in his mouth, in his voice. In his head, coming from him, the question is naïve, immature. He watches Ayano’s expression across from him. She looks almost dumbstruck by the question. 

She looks at him, and Haruka can see the years’ worth of emotions in her eyes. Ayano seems so tired. She smiles, tapping her fingernails onto the counter. “I want to get better first. That’s allowed.” 

“I can’t focus on school when I don’t know where to put apples, right?” Haruka opens his mouth to tell her it’s not a problem, but she raises her finger. “I’ve already started reviewing too, so I have a little bit of a headstart. I’m going to help my siblings find apartments, because —” she looks up. “None of us can stay here forever.” A silence falls between them. 

“Let’s both get better,” she says suddenly. “One at a time, if it’s too hard right now. We have a whole life ahead of us. Right?”

Haruka meets her eyes, his thumb tracing the glass. _We get better first._ He doesn’t know what better is, but he’d love to try it. He looks up at her, a faint smile growing on his face. “Right.”

“Haru — Haruka?” Both of their voices being on the softer side, they both jump when they hear Shintaro. He’s by the stairs, and then the two of them hear an _oomf._ When the two of them look up, Takane has collided straight into Shintaro and sent them stumbling into each other. 

“Ah, both of you!” Ayano pushes up from her seat. “Get over here and sit down!” Haruka takes another sip from his glass and smiles at them. 

“You two disappeared,” Takane says, rubbing her eyes. “The show ended already. Is this breakfast?” Shintaro is clinging to Takane’s sleeve to steady himself, and Takane is doing the same. They look ridiculous in the stairway with their pajamas crumpled up, blinking blearily at Ayano and Haruka. He raises his glass of milk. 

Takane looks at him for a long moment and steps forward. “You have a mustache,” she says, reaching forward to wipe it off. He gives her a peaceful smile and she steps back to look at Ayano. The four of them stand around the counter, looking at each other in a 4am-induced haze. 

“Let’s play a game?” Haruka offers. Ayano jumps and startles, then nods, grateful for the suggestion. Shintaro scratches his head and looks between them. Haruka finishes up his milk and Takane makes a noncommittal sound. 

“Monopoly!” Ayano says and the sound that comes out of Shintaro’s mouth is _not human._ A slow smile is spreading onto Takane’s face and Haruka is looking around between them, confused. Shintaro’s face is getting paler. If he remembers correctly, Monopoly is the — 

“The _capitalist_ game,” there’s blatant horror on Shintaro’s face and Ayano makes a _pft_ sound. “We can’t play Monopoly. Takane is insanely good at it. Ayano? ...Ayano!” 

Haruka finds it funny, how none of them can settle on a mood for more than two hours. Maybe it’s something about being together, about the usual banter that they’re used to, settling into them and making every moment together feel like coming back home and taking a large, deep, breath. It’s hard to describe, it’s always hard to describe for him. He’d trade the world for hundreds, thousands more of these moments between the four of them, though. Shintaro looks at him pleadingly, and Haruka slyly stands up.

Ayano crosses the room to the living room, pulling out a worn-out box from inside a cabinet. 

_New beginnings, new beginnings,_ Haruka thinks, helping Ayano lay out little figures and paper money. He thinks of their things shoved into a bundle on Ayano's desk, well-loved headphones and red scarves and jackets. _New beginnings._ He likes the words. They sound great in his voice.

**Author's Note:**

> that last note is very much indulgence on my part, forgive me and my angry demands for more quartet content from jin... 
> 
> when a friend of mine read this she was like "why does ayano cry when haruka talks about the bananas? that's not very realistic?" actually, i once did exactly that, so its either her or me thats crazy.
> 
> she won't see this, but thank you gem for letting me talk at length about the quartet and this fic even though you know absolutely nothing about kagerou project... i truly have never deserved you.


End file.
